Re: The Terrans
 

Why, the brave souls stuck in the engineering section. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif
It's all about survivability. You design a ship to give the crew the best chance of survival, but when the s*** hits the fan, people are gonna die no matter what you do.

Re: The Terrans
 

Righto, well after a very long time, the Battle Cruiser is now more or less done. I've got a few things to do like stick armour plating around the engines and stick the guns on the thing, but the concept is pretty much there.


http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...tleCruiser.jpg

Re: The Terrans
 

One Q... a while back, you mentioned the Terran-Tauran War. Would those Taurans perhaps resemble the Liberation Day Taurans?

(LibDay is an old strategy game. It's still fun.)

Re: The Terrans
 

Actually, the name Tauran in the context of the Galaxy of Fire was snicked from Joe Haldeman's Forever War. Although the GoF Taurens shared only their name with those Joe came up with. Battle Cruiser is done now, so here she is. Since the design is quite different to the other Terran ships, I've stuck a Terran Cruiser beside the BC to give a sense of scale.

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...tleCruiser.jpg

Re: The Terrans
 

Dude... that looks SO awesome. Please, I beg of you, finish it! Finish it that I may replace the awful (no offence) old Terrans with these beauties!

Re: The Terrans
 

I'm working on it, but I'm kinda stuck for ideas for what the Battleship & Dreadnought look like. I've got a good idea of what the Carriers will look like, ditto the transports. I've got two ideas in my head competing for what I'll do with the colony ship. Weapon's platforms are sketched and ready to go, sats & mines I'm not too sure what I'm doing.

I've got no idea what to do with the fighters, troops and bases, so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Re: The Terrans
 

As for fighters: take a look at some pics for the TIE Advanced X1 fighters - Darth Vader's TIE Fighter - as they look a little like your (excellent) ships, but are clearly recognizable as fightercraft.

edit/add: And for bases, I think you could take some inspiration from 2001: Space Oddysey. The orbital Hilton Hotel (yes it's a Hilton hotel!) could look like something for your shipset.

Re: The Terrans
 

Strategia: Don't suppose you know of anywhere I could get a hold of a good orbital Hilton pic? As for the fighters, I took a marginal amount of inspiration from the TIEs and came up with this:

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...allFighter.jpg

Re: The Terrans
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif weeb..... it's too awesome!

Re: The Terrans
 

http://www.tescosamoa.com/Shipsets/h...rectorya-c.php

that's where I found the 2001 set through the Race Directory.

Re: The Terrans
 

Now that is superb. Sexy, sleek, easily identifiable as a fighter (always a good thing). This ship set is much better than the original- not to my tastes, but reeking of quality. Excellent work.

Re: The Terrans
 

Thank you, Mighty Penguin. And since I'm always open and looking for new ideas, what would be to your tastes?

Re: The Terrans
 

That's a great-looking fighter! Excellent work! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: The Terrans
 

Thanks! And here's the Medium (right) and the Large (left). Tried something a little different with the pic, because I felt like it, really. The two are enroute from the Academy in Hawaii to oh, let's say, France.

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...3-Fighters.jpg

Re: The Terrans
 

Oh and by the by, does anyone want to give making a decent Terran race pic? This is the best I could come up with:

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...663-Terran.jpg

Re: The Terrans
 

He looks evil http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

Re: The Terrans
 

*Quietly packs away and moves out of here* Paranoia is healthy; being on the receiving side of a DUC or three isn't.

I like the race portrait, though it would be more closer to "how the Terrans look when they think we aliens aren't looking at them" rather than "how the Terrans want to appear in public".

Re: The Terrans
 

Ships look, how ling do you think it will be till there is a full shipset?

Re: The Terrans
 

I think it would be a much better idea to use a 2d drawn pic for the population than a 3d one.

Re: The Terrans
 

This shipset is definately better than the originals.

Keep up the good work!!!

Re: The Terrans
 

Renegade: Terrans are ruthless, expansionistic, aggressive and occasionally genocidal. Of course they look evil. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

ZeroAdunn: How long it takes me to get the shipset done is a matter of how long it takes me to get over my artist's block on the Battleship and Dreadnought. Any suggestions are welcome at this point coz I really don't know where I should go with them. I'm not too sure where I'm going with the bases either, but everything else I've got a vague idea of what I want to do.

The Deadly Shoe: You've obviously never seen me draw by hand. I've got a couple Terran ship sketches on the fridge and people keep saying what a good artist my 2 year old niece is.

And Kerensky: Thanks! I intend to.

Re: The Terrans
 

Oh and AZ... try to lobby to have YOUR shipset to be implemented as the stock Terran shipset in SEV.

Should certainly be possible.

And if not, well then, continue anyway. I've heard someone say that it is likely that higher-poly ships can also be used in SEV at the cost of FPS. Other games have that too.

Re: The Terrans
 

I can just imagine that Terran saying, "Heh heh heh heh... Trust me."

Re: The Terrans
 

Suggestions:

Battleship: Building on the battlecruiser design, extend the top and bottom panelling back so it covers the engines, cut out the edges where the side panels are, making the top and bottom armor panels a t shape. Then cut out a section in the middle and add some sort of weapons collection coming out of it.

Dreadnought: I would just make it a massive block. Where there is the top and bottom armor panels, with sections cut out of it, and weapon groups connected to the center components via struts. Fill out the front with various weapons ports and do the same with the sides.

Re: The Terrans
 

Those panels could be used as shield panels, to project the shield bubble...

Re: The Terrans
 

Or to serve as partial shield replacements... i.e. no shield generated in those areas, but the hull is polarized/energised/etc. to the same stopping power as the shield, cutting power requirements for the shield.

Re: The Terrans
 

Bit of both, actually, Strategia. On the second page of this thread, a couple posts up from the Cruiser pic there's a description of what the plates are made of.

ZeroAdunn, as is often the case with me, you've given me an idea for the battleship and dreadnought that probably will look nothing like what you had in mind. But thanks anyway!

As for this series appearing in SEV, I wouldn't count on it. For one thing, if it did, me posting it here would be a violation of the NDA, albeit retroactively. Second of all, when it was said that SE5 would handle higher-poly ships at a reduced frame rate, I think we were talking about somewhere in the 2000-3000 range as opposed to the recomended 1000-1500. As it stands, the Dreadnought is probably going to hit 200,000 easily. Which means that 5 DNs would take up the same ammount of poly-crunching power as an 500-ships per side battle using the recomended number of polys. If that same battle were to be played out entirely with DNs, you'd be talking about 200,000,000 polys! I think most computers would have a bit of a problem with that.

And third, Bryce can't export to .X! Auugh! One of these days I'm going to sit down and learn myself a modeller that can, then maybe you'll see these guys in SE5. Any suggestions for a good (ie: easy & cheap/free) modeller that can export to .X?

Re: The Terrans
 

Wings3d doesn't export to .x natively I think, but using Lithunrap (also free) its pretty easy to get the models it makes into .x.

Bryce, unfortunately, doesn't export to -anything-.

Re: The Terrans
 

Art of Illusion is an excellent modeller (you should check out its procedural shaders! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif) and it exports to .obj, which can be converted to .x fairly easily.
Note that there's even a script available which converts procedural displacement maps to real geometry, so for instance if you take a simple sphere and apply a "noise" displacement map to it you'd get an asteroid... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

Re: The Terrans
 

I like those ships.

Re: The Terrans
 

Thank you, Narf. Keeping with the motif of the fighter pics, here's the battleship. The three smallest ships are destroyers, the two bigger ones are light cruisers and the second biggest is a cruiser. Interesting note, the word 'Battleship' is pronounced exactly the same as a Praetorian expression meaning 'The second-worst day of your life.' Three guesses as to how they say 'the worst day of your life.' http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...attleGroup.jpg

Re: The Terrans
 

Sweet!!!!!!!!!!

Re: The Terrans
 

I know! I know! Dreadnought! Because any days that starts out with one of them showing up on your doorstep can't help but be a bad one. Imagine:
Little alien looks out his viewport.
"What the hell is that!"
"It's a Dreadnought, sir."
"Oh dear. This is gonna be a bad day for me."
"Me too, sir."

Re: The Terrans
 

Actually, the term for the worst day of your life in Praetorian is "Batael'shun'ta". Although due to a rather unlikely coincidence, Dreadnought, (pronounced "Dreed'nacht"' in Praetorian), translates into "The final moment of your existance. Aren't xenolinguistics fun? And speaking of Dreadnoughts, here's the Terran one!

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...readnought.jpg

Re: The Terrans
 

Fine ships, but they seem a bit glossy, don't you think?

Nothing wrong with gloss, mind you, but IMHO metal should be rough.

Re: The Terrans
 

See? They're supposed to be shiney. Now that I've got the warships done, I'm afraid I'll have to put the project on hold for a little while to concentrate on getting more work done for SE5, but I'll be picking it up again with the carriers in a few weeks...